Subtropical Depression 17 forms; monsoon rains kill over 100 in Asia

Subtropical Depression Seventeen formed this morning, approximately 200 miles north of Puerto Rico. The storm is not a threat to bring high winds to any land areas, but will produce heavy rains over Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the northern Lesser Antilles, and perhaps the eastern Dominican Republic. Radar estimated rainfall over Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands (Figure 1) shows rainfall amounts in excess of eight inches have fallen near St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, and the St. Thomas Airport officially measured 6.61" yesterday--its 5th wettest day in history. St. Thomas has picked up an additional 1.48" today as of 9am AST. Not surprisingly, Flash Flood Warnings are posted for the island. Weather radar out of Puerto Rico shows that a large area of heavy rain will continue to affect the Virgin Islands and eastern Puerto Rico this morning. Martinique radar shows somewhat less activity over the Lesser Antilles.

Satellite loops show STD 17 has a broad, somewhat ill-defined center of circulation, with the heaviest thunderstorms 50 or so miles from the center. This is characteristic of a subtropical storm, which is a hybrid between a tropical storm and an extratropical storm. An upper level low pressure system to the west of STD 17 has pumped cold, dry air aloft into STD 17, keeping it from being fully tropical. As the trough gradually weakens today and Thursday, STD 17 should become fully tropical and intensify into Tropical Storm Otto. Steering currents favor Otto being lifted northwards and then northeastwards out to sea by Friday.

Figure 1. Radar-estimated rainfall from Subtropical Depression Seventeen over Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands shows that rains in excess of eight inches (white colors) have fallen near St. Thomas.

Elsewhere in the tropicsMost of the models indicate the possibility that a strong tropical disturbance or tropical depression forming in the Southern Caribbean, off the coast of Nicaragua, 5 - 7 days from now.

Monsoon flooding kills 83 in Indonesia, 28 in VietnamHeavy monsoon rains triggered flash flooding in a remote section of Indonesia this week that killed at least 83 people. Another 68 people are missing, and 3,000 homeless. In Vietnam, heavy rains of up to 51" (1300 mm) have fallen since Friday, resulting in river flooding that killed at least 28 people. Over 34,000 people are homeless from the floods, which hit five provinces from Nghe An to Thua Thien-Hue, a swath of territory starting some 300 km (180 miles) south of Hanoi and stretching south. Heavy monsoon rains also hit nearby Hainen Island in China, forcing the evacuation of 64,000 people.

GALVESTON, Texas (AP) - The owner of Galveston's Flagship Hotel says it plans to demolish the landmark hotel on a pier rather than spend $15 million to renovate and repair damage from Hurricane Ike.

The Galveston County Daily News reports Landry's Restaurants has told Galveston's city planning commission that it plans to replace the 225-room hotel in front of the city's historic seawall with an amusement park.

The commission endorsed the plan to the City Council, which will have the final say.

Landry's had bought the hurricane-mauled hotel in 2005 for $500,000.

The hotel was built in 1965 on a pier built in 1943. Ironically, it replaced an amusement park damaged in 1962 by Hurricane Carla.

BELLEMONT, Ariz. (AP) - Two tornadoes touched down in northern Arizona early Wednesday, derailing 28 cars of a parked freight train, blowing semis off the highway and smashing out the windows of dozens of homes.

The first tornado hit Bellemont - west of Flagstaff - around 5:30 a.m. Wednesday and the second touched down east of the small community a short time later.

Fifteen homes in Bellemont were so badly damaged that they were uninhabitable and the estimated 30 people who lived in them were evacuated. Authorities were setting up a shelter at midmorning Wednesday, said Coconino County Sheriff's Office spokesman Gerry Blair.

About 30 RVs were damaged at a business in Bellemont that sells the vehicles and runs a camp ground for RVs.

No serious injuries or deaths were reported. Two crew members were on the train when it was cast off the tracks around 6:30 a.m. PDT, said Burlington Northern-Santa Fe spokeswoman Lena Kent, but neither was hurt.

The train was hauling cargo from ports in Los Angeles to the east and contained no hazardous materials. The derailed cars are blocking both main rail lines through the area, and the railroad expects to reopen one of the lines by midnight.

In the Baderville area, authorities had to pull a family out of a home where they had been trapped because of damage from the tornado. It wasn't known whether anyone was trapped in homes in the Bellemont area, which is about 20 miles west of Flagstaff.

Severe weather is expected to continue through Wednesday, and comes a day after storms swept across the western U.S., dropping record-setting rain in northern Nevada, pounding Phoenix with hail, and dumping enough snow at the top of the Sierra to close a mountain highway pass.

Quoting HurricaneDean07:Poll Time,Do you think we will have after Otto/17(A) 1 Storm(B) 0 Storms(C) 2 Storms(D) 3 or more Stormsfor during the remainder of the season...

D. Everyone seems to forget we are in La Nina mode, not El Nino. We will have some Subtropical storms in the Open Atlantic and probably 2 more storms in the Western Caribbean if conditions apply. This is reasonable based on history of past La Nina seasons.

Good afternoon to you too Allan! Nice update! Yes Wilma was a BAD storm! It seems that back when she was moving away from Mexico and toward Florida nobody seemed to think she'd re-develop into a major. I don't know how they didn't expect it...SE FL was caught completely unprepared for Cat 3/4 winds and alot of the major damage occurred down there. I don't know how they didn't take it more seriously...

Some of the complacency was likely due to Wilma being a backside hit (from the SE Florida POV). Even though everyone *should* know that crossing the Everglades isn't going to hurt a storm and may in fact even help it intensify, the fact is people don't know that. They just saw the track aiming at Port Charlotte and thought that was nowhere near them - true enough, until it crosses the peninsula and gets to you.

Also, Wilma eventually struck a little south of the skinny black line forecast. Obviously no one should have depended on that as gospel, but again, what people do and what they should do are often very divergent.

But I think a big factor was simply unpreparedness due to unfamiliarity. It seems amazing after 2004 and early 2005 (even post-Andrew at all) that anyone in SE FL could have thought it couldn't happen to them, but believe me that was the dominant feeling in Broward County pre-Wilma.

I think Dade, which aborbed far less damage from Wilma as it was projected to, was nevertheless much better prepared. No doubt the very recent experience of Katrina and the 13 year-old but still too-well-remembered experience of Andrew played a key part in that. The only people in Dade who were caught with their pants down were FP&L. Too busy counting their money I guess.

But Broward had been leading a charmed life since 1950, the last time they really took a hit. 2004 didn't really affect them; nor did Katrina. Andrew of course had been a non-event. I was amazed by the number of Browardites I knew who all week (because remember we got a full week's warning on what would pretty much become Wilma's exact track) simply didn't prepare. Not couldn't, but didn't. Afterward, the more honest of them admitted they had simply blown it.

Obviously there were still tens of thousdands of Browardites who weren't caught napping. But the dominant feeling among the county's residents were that hurricanes were something that happened to south Dade, not up here.

Re intensification, I think a lot of what happened with Wilma was simply a function of her being steered along the edge of a powerful cold front (especially strong by south Florida in October standards). Since her forward motion was an incredible 25 mph, that speed was added to her rotational velocity of ~90 mph to produce a max wind velocity of 110 mph along her SSE edge. No one had really anticiapted quite such a large forward motion, thus the predictions for a Cat 2.